Comments on: Usability. And Then Some.

By: Neal

Neal — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:58:34 +0000

We made subtle changes to ours by making the primary items more obvious and the rest somewhat less so, and found big improvements. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean. We didn’t want to lose some of the search options that many people found valuable, but we also wanted to make the form appear less like every field was required. We’re happy with our results so far, but I can’t say that it’s perfect, by any means.

By: Pam Landis

Pam Landis — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 05:58:59 +0000

So then does anyone have an answer on a perfect Find A Doctor application? Generally, we found people plowed through ours and on our “future” one, they plowed through a little more quickly. But it was painful to watch.

By: Stephen Halsey

Stephen Halsey — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:27:44 +0000

Thanks for the write up Pamela. I did not attend Neal’s session, though it would have been a good one to see.

We have hired a usability firm to run tests on one of our current projects (a massive realignment of one of our primary sections on our main website). But instead of bringing our participants in at the end of the design to test, we have brought them in at the beginning to really try and facilitate a user centered design approach. This is the first time we have done this kind of testing, in this fashion, with a professional usability firm

The first two phases were really centered around the development of content template wireframes. We used this testing to find out what exactly people wanted to see on the page and used those findings as a basis for creating the content template.

So our project has three phases, with each phase being tested accordingly:

Phase 1: We tested our initial wireframes; made adjustments – created wireframes with more fully realized layout based on content preferences
Phase 2: We tested these revised wireframes, made adjustments; content is now being developed.
Phase 3: We will test a built-out staging site with pages designed and content developed per results of first 2 phases. Hopefully we will not make too many adjustments but I am sure we will make a few.

It is not cheap, but the experience so far has been invaluable; so much so that I have budgeted for them to do ongoing testing for our more expansive projects. And one can argue that it can help save money in the long run by taking the guesswork out of the process.

By: Carolyn Fisher

Carolyn Fisher — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:33:59 +0000

I was amazed to learn the same thing about online forms when we launched our new intranet. Our old site was built in Dreamweaver and didn’t have any way to search areas like policies, news or classes. You simply had to scroll through pages of information to find what you needed. When we introduced modules with search boxes people complained about what they perceived as a need to choose a particular category. They didn’t have any idea that you could just leave the fields empty and click the submit button to get the whole list. The written instructions explaining the process didn’t help much.

By: Neal Linkon

Neal Linkon — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:06:31 +0000

I wish I had time for it every year. It’s that useful and entertaining. And I’m really glad Pam’s experience mirrored ours. For whatever it is worth, Pam, we saw the same thing on our Find a Doc form. Several users completed the whole thing like they were filling out a purchase form on Amazon!

By: Aaron Holbrook

Aaron Holbrook — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:08:43 +0000

Wow, some great points Pamela. I kind of suspected the video thing, but didn’t realize it would come across quite so suspiciously.

And I definitely agree with you when you say that design informs function – Neal had the same thing to say about the ‘find a doctor’ application. Apparently, people think they are expected to fill out every single box. Things like this aren’t thought of enough when creating forms (or other online web-apps for that matter).

Thanks for the great insight into what user testing can really be like, and how eye opening it is. Great post!

By: Pamela Landis

Pamela Landis — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:47:23 +0000

Hopefully, when we get the recommendations from the testing firm, I can share some nice screen shots or videos of the users navigating a site.

We also showed them three design comps. Two that our web firm did were liked by all the users. One that an ad agency did was universally panned.

It lead off with a splash page (no kidding) and then went to all this video. One guy said, “Oh my God, I hate this.” I nearly spit out my coffee.

Then we asked a user who said they would use our site to find a doctor to attempt that task. So he found it where it says, Find, then Doctors. He saw it,paused, said, “this looks good.” Then skipped that and went to Learn – Health Encyclopedia….

At this point, I was in the fetal position in the corner.

By: Jake Bunger

Jake Bunger — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:31:25 +0000

Between this entry, and Neal Linkon’s session on usability in Vegas, you’ve summed up a “best practices” in regards to assembling an intuitive “find a doc” application. Pam, for not attending the conference, parts of your findings echoed Neal’s discussion to the letter practically, so it’s great to see it independently reinforced here.

I’m also happy to see more cheering for usability testing, especially in “Big Brother is watching” style. *I’m* all for it; convincing the check signers is the tough part. But I’ll add this to my arsenal.

Thanks for your insights … I think I’ll go take another look @ our physician referral app now …